Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - September 2008
The Department of Citizenship and Immigration is embarking on a pilot project in hopes of finding a potential solution to the federal skilled worker application backlog and growing processing times.
Starting this October, the processing centre in Sydney, Nova Scotia will add 30 new staff and will begin centralizing the intake of immigrant applications. The government will review the situation after 18 months to recommend changes as necessary.
"By centralizing the intake of federal skilled worker applications, we are alleviating some of the workload in our overseas visa offices," said Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley, upon announcing the project. "This allows visa officers to focus more on processing applications."
There is currently an estimated backlog of over 900,000 applications. The government has recently passed legislation which they hope will ease the situation and improve processing, including a controversial policy that will allow visa offices to fast-track the applications of certain professionals who are deemed high-priority in Canada�s job market.
Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada
